WE CONDEMN the use of police violence against CUNY community members who were protesting peacefully at the public Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing at Baruch College on November 21, 2011. We also reject the official statement[2] released by the administration of the City University of New York regarding those events.

STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF peacefully entered the Baruch lobby to attend the public meeting of the Board of Trustees and were immediately met by a line of police carrying large wooden truncheons and blocking access to the building. Students who were on the official roster of speakers were also denied access. At no time did the students, faculty, and staff attempt to push past the massed police officers, nor to confront them physically in any way. The police directed us to the first-floor overflow room where the meeting would be televised live. Knowing that our voices would not be heard in the broadcast room, we decided that we would hold an assembly in the lobby and allow people to tell their stories and testimonies of experiences as students at CUNY. Most of us sat down on the ground so that speakers could stand and be heard.

THE POLICE ATTACKED US shortly after we sat down and began pushing us toward the wall, responding to our peaceful, lawful protest with physical confrontation. The suggestion provided in the CUNY administration’s statement that anyone “surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials” is a categorical lie, and this is documented in video footage of the events (see below). As the officers continued to push us away from the public meeting, they blocked all exits from the lobby but a single, revolving door, through which we were forced to walk one at a time. Many of the peaceful protesters were shoved violently by the campus police, jabbed and struck in their ribs with wooden truncheons, and left badly bruised. At least one student was struck in the face. It was a miracle that no one was more seriously injured. Those who refused to leave were told that they would be arrested; when one person identified himself to officers as a CUNY faculty member and asked on what charge he would be arrested, he was not given an answer. Another officer blurted, “Because it’s a riot!”

WE DEPLORE THE USE OF VIOLENCE against peaceful protesters. We deplore the criminal charges made against peaceful protesters exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly. We also deplore the CUNY administration’s misrepresentation of the events at Baruch, devised to obscure its complicity in violent action against its own students, faculty, staff, and community.

We are CUNY. We are of the working class of New York City. We teach the working class of New York City; we teach the immigrants who have come to New York to live and work; we teach the present and future public employees of New York City. Our brothers, sisters, children, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents—they are police officers, firefighters, social workers, teachers, factory workers. WE ARE NEW YORK CITY AND WE STAND WITH NEW YORK CITY. We are CUNY students, who believe in this university and in this city. We are CUNY faculty, who have chosen to teach at CUNY because we believe in the mission to educate and elevate our sisters and brothers. We are the 99%, and we demand a public education system that is truly public.

For standing with our brothers, sisters, and students, we have been assaulted by police officers who have not yet accepted that they have a legal responsibility to refuse unlawful orders, and that they have a moral responsibility to follow their conscience when they are told to turn on their own. Our fight is not with the Police Department of the City of New York, but the NYPD has chosen to fight their own brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and children. We have no desire to be in conflict with them, but if they continue to “just follow orders” in the face of all moral, ethical, and political compulsions to the contrary, then we have no choice but to resist them. But we will resist them peacefully, civilly, using our rights to do so. We do not want to fight them; we want them to realize that our fight is one fight. We know that they know this.

The students and teachers of the CUNY system stand with all of those who believe in the mission of public education, and the crucial importance of education for the public. We stand against those who seek to privatize an institution that was established to serve the most disadvantaged of New Yorkers. And we refuse to passively accept a program of tuition increases that would disenfranchise our students, whom we love and we fight for every day of the week. We do our jobs based on heartfelt and hard-won principles; we study in order to be better citizens and workers, we teach to be better citizens; and we ask that the city’s police, firefighters, public employees, teachers, transport workers, shopkeepers, students, factory workers, service workers, care workers, health workers—THAT THE WHOLE CITY STAND WITH US.

[NOTE: This statement was composed and first published on Sunday, November 20, 2011. The next day, campus police used violence against nonviolent CUNY community members, mostly students, who were protesting peacefully at the public Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing at Baruch College. This statement was intended as a way to stop such actions, and it remains a demand for an end to all such violent actions against nonviolent student protesters.]

We faculty members of The City University of New York (CUNY) express our outrage at the police brutality against nonviolent student and faculty demonstrators at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Davis.

We declare our support for the opening of spaces for protest, political dissent, and, when necessary, nonviolent civil disobedience on our campuses. We support the CUNY student movement in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, including the student strike organized by our students on November 17, along with the protests on November 21 against the prospect of tuition hikes to be decided on by the Board of Trustees, and any future non-violent protests.

We call upon the CUNY administration to look upon these student protests not as a threat that must be monitored, policed, and repressed, but as an opportunity for a discussion across our community about the future of the City University of New York as a public institution meant to serve all those who live in this city.

Therefore, we the undersigned:

1) Deplore any use of violence against nonviolent student protesters, anywhere.

2) Call upon the CUNY administration to support and engage respectfully with those students, educators, and community members who are working to open up spaces for protest, dissent, and discussion.

3) Declare that the use of any violence whatsoever against nonviolent student protesters will never be tolerated at CUNY.

4) Insist that administrators at both the CUNY-wide level and at individual campuses not call upon any outside police forces, including the New York City Police Department, or any other city, state, or federal law enforcement agencies, in order to disperse students who are engaged in nonviolent protests.

[To sign this statement, please send an email to tonyalessandrini@gmail.com]

[List of signatories in process:]

Mimi Abramovitz (Professor of Social Policy, Silberman School of Social Work, Hunter College)

Students protest in front of Federal Hall in 1989 against proposed CUNY tuition hikes

Occupy the Board of Trustees!

Have your voice heard! Tell the Board of Trustees that our education is not for sale. A budget funded by increased tuition while increasingly exploiting precarious adjunct labor is not OK! Click on the image below (or here) to download a poster that illustrates the privatization and systematic defunding of one of the largest and most diverse public universities in the country.

With over 250,000 full-time students, over 250,000 professional and continuing students, and millions of New Yorkers with degrees from CUNY, working at CUNY, with children and friends attending CUNY…Who is CUNY?

We have occupied a new space in the heart of Manhattan. Here is the statement of the newly occupied space at 5th avenue and 14th st., formerly a New School study space, now a reclaimed as an open, all-city student occupation.

An Inaugural Statement of Purpose for the Occupation

Two days ago the NYPD, under the orders of a billionaire mayor who does not represent us, raided Occupy Wall Street with riot gear and batons. Today we occupy. Everywhere. On this historic day of global action, the students of New York City public and private universities and colleges, in solidarity with the 99%, Occupy Wall Street, labor, and all those dispossessed by our economic and political system, will expand the struggle and occupy a university space.

Today, the university is a supreme symbol of social and economic inequality. Skyrocketing tuition costs at public and private institutions deny us access to higher education and saddle us with crushing debt. We will reclaim this elite space and make it open to all. We will foster dialogue and build solidarity between students, workers, and others excluded or marginalized by economic and social inequalities. We will build community through the commonality of occupation. We will offer free education – this is systematically forbidden. We join a long tradition of student activism and struggle. We the indebted and the future unemployed and underemployed stand committed to this movement for our collective lives. We invite all to join us in this open occupation.

March with you colleagues and comrades from universities and high schools across New York City, stand up against tuition hikes, student debt, and the corporatization of the university system, and celebrate the growing student movement.

CUNY Faculty Statement of Support for Nov. 17 Student Strike in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street

We faculty members of The City University of New York (CUNY) would like to express our solidarity with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the nascent student movement it has helped galvanize at CUNY. We support the movement’s stand against the structural inequalities that lead to the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few and against austerity measures taken during the recent economic downturn. The costs of this crisis and current social order constitute a harsh reality for many New Yorkers and especially CUNY students because our student body has always been the 99%: working-class people of all colors with a strong commitment to education and democracy. The increasing tuition costs and growing debt burden foisted upon students undermines not only CUNY’s institutional goals, but also our students’ very futures.

This is why we support the student strike organized by our students on Thursday November 17, along with the protests on November 21 against the prospect of tuition hikes to be decided on by the Board of Trustees.